In this post I’m going to give you a run down of the main improvements you are going to find on the site. I think you’ll find many of them very helpful. Skip ahead if you just want to get to the details of the new features.
Just like that, the summer comes to an end and we all prepare ourselves for the new school year. I hope you all enjoyed your summer!
As always, I spent much of the summer working on as many updates as I could squeeze into the time available. Many of these stemming from personal requests from teachers as well as long time commitments to expanding the platform.
After three years of development the site has become almost unrecognisable compared to where I started and I’m really pleased with where the site is at right now. However, there is still a lot to do.
Over the years I have done a lot of backend work that allows some expansion to be easy to do, and since Christmas I have also been working to refactor several areas of the site to allow more functionality to be added without affecting performance.
Free trial
A quick mention if you are a newcomer to the free trial. Get in touch with me via the site contact and I offer a 30 day free, no commitment trial to the site which offers access to everything in the site.
I’m looking at ways to try to provide more features to schools for free and as part of that I’ve now also included the new CodeITs feature for free to any teacher who has an account. You can read more about that below.
Training
In the coming months I’ll be offering online training to subscribers to get the most out of the expanded platform. With all of the features now packed into the site know that some of you may need some assistance to get started. I’ll be announcing these sessions directly to subscribers to allow you to book onto the sessions so keep an eye on your dashboard for news shortly.
New Features
Multi language support
A major update to GoCodeIt means the main editor now supports C#, Visual Basic, Python, JavaScript, and HTML/CSS/JavaScript web projects.
This has involved a significant rewrite of the editor infrastructure and opens the door to supporting even more languages in the future.
What does this mean for teachers?
- Add multiple languages to any project directly from the Languages tab.
- Students can choose which supported language they want to use.
- Solutions and templates are optional — you only need to add them if you want to use the integrated language-specific support.
- Existing test cases generally work without changes.
- HTML/CSS/JavaScript projects can now be created and run through the same main editor.
There are still a few finishing touches being added, including extending file-system support to the new languages, but the core functionality is now ready to use.
I’m currently adding multi-language support to all of the built-in assignments.
This has been a significant upgrade and one I’ve been working on for some time — I’m really pleased to finally have it available!
CodeITs – New Feature and available for FREE!
Another big teacher request is now available — and CodeITs are completely free to use.
A CodeIT is a shareable code sample that can be created in any supported language and can be kept private or shared publicly.
Think of them as a little like Trinkets, but more flexible. If you want to share or demonstrate some code without creating a full programming project, simply create a CodeIT and share it.
CodeITs include:
- Multi-language support
- File-system support
- Easy editing directly in the browser
- Keep private or share publicly
- Subscribers can save CodeITs to their own CodeIT bank
- Students can copy CodeITs directly into their playgrounds
And the best part: CodeITs are free for everyone, whether you are a subscriber or not.
This gives teachers an easy way to share code examples with students, demonstrate programs live in the browser, and let students experiment and modify the code themselves.
It also gives everyone a chance to try out the new multi-language editor without needing to create a full project.
Timed Assignments and Assessments
Another big teacher request is now available: timed assignment access and assessments.
When creating an assignment, you can now control exactly when students can access it by setting a start date/time, an end date/time, or both.
Timed Assessment Mode
You can also give students a specific time allowance to complete an assignment.
The student can start the assessment when it becomes available, and their timer begins when they click Start. Once their allocated time expires, the assignment closes automatically.
This should be particularly useful for timed classroom assessments, but also for homework or activities where you want students to have a fixed amount of working time.
Automatic Extra Time
And one feature I’m particularly pleased with: extra time can now be automatically applied to individual students.
Simply select the amount of extra time a student should receive, and GoCodeIt will automatically calculate their extended deadline.
No more manually working out who needs extra time or remembering to extend individual assignments!
I’ve wanted this one for a while, so I’m very pleased to finally have it available.
More Control Over Student Support
A few things have always frustrated me when using the platform to teach, particularly around how much support individual students should have access to.
GoCodeIt already allows teachers to give or remove access to support features such as Parsons Problems and Fill in the Blanks from Solutions, with these settings customisable for individual students.
This support system has now been extended to include the Autocomplete and Error Checking (Linter) tools.
What does this mean?
Teachers can now decide who gets access to which support tools, and when.
For example:
- Allow autocomplete for some students but not others.
- Give a student access to the linter while they are learning, but remove it for an assessment.
- Disable specific support tools for an entire assignment.
- Override the assignment settings for individual students.
- Provide additional support to students who need it without changing the experience for everyone else.
This means you can use the same assignment with different levels of support depending on the needs of your students — whether you’re teaching, practising, setting homework or running an assessment.
The aim is to give teachers much finer control over the balance between support and independence, without having to create different versions of the same assignment.
Lots of Usability & Quality of Life Improvements
Alongside the bigger features, I’ve also been making lots of smaller usability and quality-of-life improvements across the site.
As GoCodeIt has grown, there’s now a lot more content and functionality to manage, and some of the smaller improvements can take surprisingly long to get right. However, I want to keep improving the overall experience, not just adding new features.
One example is the introduction of compact views and improved folder management. For users with lots of projects, assignments and other content, managing everything within the available screen space was becoming increasingly difficult.
The new compact card views and folder systems make it much easier to organise, navigate and manage larger amounts of content.
There are plenty more usability improvements planned, so if there’s something that frustrates you, feels awkward, or you simply think could work better, let me know! Your feedback continues to help shape what I work on next.
Finally…Thank You
As always, thank you for your continued support, feedback and suggestions. GoCodeIt continues to grow because of the ideas and requests you send my way, and I really do appreciate it.
There’s plenty more to come!
Have a great year!
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